Best-selling journalist Antony Loewenstein trav­els across Afghanistan, Pakistan, Haiti, Papua New Guinea, the United States, Britain, Greece, and Australia to witness the reality of disaster capitalism. He discovers how companies such as G4S, Serco, and Halliburton cash in on or­ganized misery in a hidden world of privatized detention centers, militarized private security, aid profiteering, and destructive mining.

Disaster has become big business. Talking to immigrants stuck in limbo in Britain or visiting immigration centers in America, Loewenstein maps the secret networks formed to help cor­porations bleed what profits they can from economic crisis. He debates with Western contractors in Afghanistan, meets the locals in post-earthquake Haiti, and in Greece finds a country at the mercy of vulture profiteers. In Papua New Guinea, he sees a local commu­nity forced to rebel against predatory resource companies and NGOs.

What emerges through Loewenstein’s re­porting is a dark history of multinational corpo­rations that, with the aid of media and political elites, have grown more powerful than national governments. In the twenty-first century, the vulnerable have become the world’s most valu­able commodity. Disaster Capitalism is published by Verso in 2015 and in paperback in January 2017.

Vulture capitalism has seen the corporation become more powerful than the state, and yet its work is often done by stealth, supported by political and media elites. The result is privatised wars and outsourced detention centres, mining companies pillaging precious land in developing countries and struggling nations invaded by NGOs and the corporate dollar.
Best-selling journalist Antony Loewenstein travels to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Haiti, Papua New Guinea and across Australia to witness the reality of this largely hidden world of privatised detention centres, outsourced aid, destructive resource wars and militarized private security. Who is involved and why? Can it be stopped? What are the alternatives in a globalised world? Profits of Doom, published in 2013 and released in an updated edition in 2014, challenges the fundamentals of our unsustainable way of life and the money-making imperatives driving it. It is released in an updated edition in 2014.

Four Australian thinkers come together to ask and answer the big questions, such as: What is the nature of the universe? Doesn't religion cause most of the conflict in the world? And Where do we find hope?
We are introduced to different belief systems – Judaism, Christianity, Islam – and to the argument that atheism, like organised religion, has its own compelling logic. And we gain insight into the life events that led each author to their current position.
Jane Caro flirted briefly with spiritual belief, inspired by 19th century literary heroines such as Elizabeth Gaskell and the Bronte sisters. Antony Loewenstein is proudly culturally, yet unconventionally, Jewish. Simon Smart is firmly and resolutely a Christian, but one who has had some of his most profound spiritual moments while surfing. Rachel Woodlock grew up in the alternative embrace of Baha'i belief but became entranced by its older parent religion, Islam.
Provocative, informative and passionately argued, For God's Sake, published in 2013, encourages us to accept religious differences, but to also challenge more vigorously the beliefs that create discord.

After Zionism, published in 2012 and 2013 with co-editor Ahmed Moor, brings together some of the world s leading thinkers on the Middle East question to dissect the century-long conflict between Zionism and the Palestinians, and to explore possible forms of a one-state solution.
Time has run out for the two-state solution because of the unending and permanent Jewish colonization of Palestinian land. Although deep mistrust exists on both sides of the conflict, growing numbers of Palestinians and Israelis, Jews and Arabs are working together to forge a different, unified future. Progressive and realist ideas are at last gaining a foothold in the discourse, while those influenced by the colonial era have been discredited or abandoned. Whatever the political solution may be, Palestinian and Israeli lives are intertwined, enmeshed, irrevocably.
This daring and timely collection includes essays by Omar Barghouti, Jonathan Cook, Joseph Dana, Jeremiah Haber, Jeff Halper, Ghada Karmi, Antony Loewenstein, Saree Makdisi, John Mearsheimer, Ahmed Moor, Ilan Pappe, Sara Roy and Phil Weiss.

The 2008 financial crisis opened the door for a bold, progressive social movement. But despite widespread revulsion at economic inequity and political opportunism, after the crash very little has changed.
Has the Left failed? What agenda should progressives pursue? And what alternatives do they dare to imagine?
Left Turn, published by Melbourne University Press in 2012 and co-edited with Jeff Sparrow, is aimed at the many Australians disillusioned with the political process. It includes passionate and challenging contributions by a diverse range of writers, thinkers and politicians, from Larissa Berendht and Christos Tsiolkas to Guy Rundle and Lee Rhiannon. These essays offer perspectives largely excluded from the mainstream. They offer possibilities for resistance and for a renewed struggle for change.

The Blogging Revolution, released by Melbourne University Press in 2008, is a colourful and revelatory account of bloggers around the globe why live and write under repressive regimes - many of them risking their lives in doing so.
Antony Loewenstein's travels take him to private parties in Iran and Egypt, internet cafes in Saudi Arabia and Damascus, to the homes of Cuban dissidents and into newspaper offices in Beijing, where he discovers the ways in which the internet is threatening the ruld of governments.
Through first-hand investigations, he reveals the complicity of Western multinationals in assisting the restriction of information in these countries and how bloggers are leading the charge for change.
The blogging revolution is a superb examination about the nature of repression in the twenty-first century and the power of brave individuals to overcome it.
It was released in an updated edition in 2011, post the Arab revolutions, and an updated Indian print version in 2011.

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Rupert Murdoch’s Australian is a shameless apologist for Israeli terror. Today, Foreign Editor Greg Sheridan continues the delusions and praises the Australian government for taking a brave stand for Israel at the UN:

“The [Prime Minister John] Howard-[Foreign Minister Alexander] Downer duumvirate in Australian foreign policy has changed our position on the Middle East at the UN in a way that is wholly remarkable, not only independent but positively brave, utterly politically incorrect and undoubtedly right in principle; and, amazingly, is meeting with success.

“Australia has always been a strong friend of Israel. But for most of the past few decades it has taken an understandable, if less than inspiring, refuge in abstaining from most of the plethora of routinely one-sided anti-Israel resolutions and actions at the UN.”

As, once again, Israel is asked by the Palestinians to “not jeopardise the peace plan“, Sheridan focuses solely on the Israelis, the major US client state in the Middle East and recipient of large financial and military support.

The Palestinians are mentioned in passing – “of course the human rights of Palestinians should be respected and the UN should play a role in this” – but no mention of the occupation, no mention of Gaza still being surrounded on sea, land and air and no mention of Jewish-only roads in the occupied territories.

Sheridan sees Australia’s role as supporting Israel because it’s strategically important – and alongside the US – rather than actually examining the behaviour of Israel itself in the West Bank or (until recently) Gaza.

Melbourne-based academic Scott Burchill has written about former Labor leader Mark Latham and the media’s response to his views on the US alliance. Sheridan, like much of the establishment press, will simply not allow a political or media figure to openly challenge the status quo on foreign affairs. Blind support for Israel is one of those cornerstones.

Burchill writes:

“The near hysterical media reaction to revelations that former Labor leader Mark Latham had serious doubts about the US alliance was more than a mobilisation of bipartisan support for the relationship amongst Australia’s political elites. It was also an expression of anger by alliance cheerleaders, especially those in the Murdoch press, that someone who retained such discordant views had not been filtered out before rising to such lofty political heights.”

Burchill's comments about the filter of political ascendance and frighteningly close to the bone. I think the last politician to have experienced the same assult on his person was Golf Whitlam.

Antony Loewenstein

Indeed.Every leader since – Fraser, Hawke, Keating and Howard – can be relied upon to dutifully salute to the US call.

anthony

Dont forget Bob Brown. The leader of that rather odd far-left party.Senator Brown was urging Australia to listen to the US call for war, in 1991, and join the adventure in Iraq.

Pete's Blog

Yes I think unqualified US or Australian support for Israel gives Israel too much momentun in the self righteousness stakes giving Israel excessive headkicking ability in the Middle East.Israel needs some assurance that it does not need to unleash little bits of its nuclear arsenal but it does not deserve a licence to kill Palestinians or other Arabs.So overt political and graduated financial pressure by the US on Israel (to cool tensions) is appropriate, I reckon.Re Australia – we're aleady seen as an American lackey so we should keep right out of being a lapdog supporter of Isreal unless a substantial number of Australians (Jewish or otherwise) can persuade our government that support is warranted.

Ibrahamav

But Austrailia's support is qualified, as is the American's.Therefore, Israel deserves to have excessive headkicking ability in the Middle East.

Wombat

Excessive anything cannot be a good thing. Like power and absolute power. That sort of power should never be given without checks and balances that that guarantee that the "headkicking" is not purely self serving or unjust.